By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

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The saying that the rich get richer while the poor get children has been widely validated in both rich and poor countries. Maybe that partly explains why, after getting on top of the economic game and relaxing the one-child-per-couple policy two decades ago, the Chinese have not rushed to produce five babies from each woman like we do in Uganda.

China is now doing 1.7 per couple, meaning 17 children per 10 couples, about the same as America, their economic rival. Luxembourg, the world’s richest nation, and Japan are at 1.3.

Thoughts of rich and poor came to mind two weeks back, when it was announced that Uganda would hold its population census next year. Even poor countries have their rich, who start acting like the rich in rich countries.

In matters of richness, compound interest has been described as the eighth wonder of the world. Uganda’s elite discovered compound interest when our government got ambitious and, to finance a budget almost twice the revenue it can collect, stepped up the issuance of lucrative 20-year bonds. It offered almost 20 percent interest, guaranteeing to double the bondholder’s money after four years! By the time the money matures, it has multiplied several times as the holders play their golf.

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Meanwhile, the poor Ugandans have also been indulging in compound reproduction, delivering a compound population growth over the decades. The poor traditionally viewed many children as their wealth because these meant more hands to till the land. So they engaged in compound reproduction.

Consider the fact that Uganda’s population was six million when we got independence on October 9, 1962. After harvesting compound babies for seven years, Uganda held its first population census on August 18, 1969. The population had grown by 50 percent to nine million! A year and half later, military strongman Idi Amin took power and found the population to be 10 million. He spent the next eight years bragging that “all the ten million Ugandans” were solidly supporting him.

The guys who overthrew Amin in 1979 counted again a year later and found the population to be 12.5 million. Not bad. The fertile young women and men have been working hard at the compound game and, as we celebrated independence this week, statistics website Worldometer said we were 48.6 million, a 700 percent growth in six decades.

Some blame President Museveni, who “brought the peace” in 1986 and people started “sleeping” a lot — no longer running around fleeing the insecurity that had bedevilled the country. Even the Acholi of northern Uganda, who spent two decades fleeing insecurity caused by their rebellious son Joseph Kony from 1987 to 2007, also found enough sleep to earn compound babies. Acholi, in the first half decade of the millennium, was found to be Uganda’s most reproductive area. It seems they enjoyed the “Museveni sleep” during daytime, when the rebels would be sleeping, and ran at night, when Kony was awake and active.

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Besides the compound interest that poor Ugandans earn in the form of babies, Uganda’s population is further “boosted” by the influx of their fellow poor from the Democratic Republic of Congo, running away from wealth-induced conflicts in their mineral-rich country.

But the biggest contributor to Uganda’s compound population growth is South Sudan, whose people are fleeing poverty caused by insecurity. So wealth from the west and poverty from the north are the biggest external drivers of Uganda’s population growth. Our men snap up the Congolese women as fast as they arrive here but wide cultural differences are delaying the induction of South Sudan girls in the population-compounding game of the poor.

There is one little problem, however, called land. We aren’t acquiring production skills and technology fast enough, so we keep opening up more land to produce just the same amount of food per acre to feed the growing number of mouths. With 241,000 square kilometres, we have a population density of about 241 persons per square kilometre. And with a square kilometre having just over 241 acres, we now have one acre for every Ugandan.

Don’t think about the similarity in these digits; the fact is that at this rate of compounding, we will soon have less than an acre per Ugandan.
Let us revisit the subject next year after the census.

Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail:[email protected]